134386-whats-the-catch
Content ---- The catch is that you cant create guilds or an arena team if you dont have a subscription. | |} ---- Honestly? Because the game needed a lot of work at launch, and players were unwilling to come back even after Carbine made massive improvements. It's something I will likely forever be sad about. :( | |} ---- ---- | |} ---- that was not his question... | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- The attunement process was too hard for most. Outside of raiding there wasn't a whole lot to do end game at launch. It just honestly needed another 6 months of dev time before the launch. Instead it was rushed out and spent 6+ months playing fix the bugs that should never have been there | |} ---- The subscription model is dead, it is no longer viable. A few games are barely holding on, in denial, but it's only a matter of time until they go F2P too (WoW is at an all time low of subs). The bottom line is the F2P model is more profitable, and better for the game as a whole (population, economy, etc.). There's not really a "catch" involved, these games aren't going F2P as a service to their players, they are doing it to earn more money, and it works. | |} ---- WildStar is all about the endgame, ironically. The catch is that at launch they made some grievous mistakes that cost them the folks who wanted to play that endgame. It became an accelerating feedback spiral of doom; the more people left because of those issues, the harder it became to find the people necessary to do the endgame content properly. Since WildStar is very focused on the endgame raiding/dungeons, when it became harder and harder to find the people to do this properly, it became more difficult to retain people in the game at all. It was a vicious cycle. Fundamentally Carbine was too slow to address the many issues that started this cycle so they couldn't short-circuit it in time. Though they have fixed many (not all, but enough) of the problems that started the death spiral, it was too late and the damage was done. The only option they had left to get population numbers back up to where they need to be to make endgame dungeon/raiding healthy again was F2P. In short, W* is actually a pretty good game and the end-game is quite solid, if you can find the people to do it. The problems that led to the original population problems have (mostly) been addressed. But the only way to get people back into the game to actually get max level characters to fill out the end-game again at this point is F2P, so here we are :) | |} ---- Wildstar's biggest flaw was it expected gamers to have as much patience as they used to. People don't anymore, they feel it is easier to get mad and stomp their feet, or leave for one of the other available options instead of investing in a game. Also, instead of wishing the people who like the game well, and going along their way they tend to complain to anyone who will listen about what they think sucks when most of the time it is a matter of opinion. People tend to make decisions based on the tone of the commentary they hear more than the substance, so a lot of complaining means people who would have normally given the game a shot don't. Edited September 30, 2015 by Lemurian | |} ---- ---- Nope, WoW is still in the millions of subs and racks enough money still. They make MORE money right now even with less subs because of the stock market. It's affecting the entire company lol and 6+ million subs is more than any other mmo in history in WoW declining state and WILL go up with the new expansion again. It's because it has loyal players from the olden days and was the first of the few sub games to succeed thus you will never see WoW go down into the ground. Same for FF14, it has a COLOSSAL AMOUNT of loyal fans to support the P2P model due to the FF series having a history of quality of it's solo player games. Edited September 30, 2015 by Laosduude | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- I would disagree that the attunement process was too hard for most. However I think we can all agree that the attunement process was certainly BUGGY, which led to people not getting attunement credit when they had put in the work/effort to overcome that difficulty. That for sure sent a lot of people looking for the exit... | |} ---- It's actually below 6 mil right now (5.6), and to be completely honest that's a very misleading number, if not an outright lie. Chinese players do not use a subscription system, they buy prepaid time cards (a nickel an hour), and as long as their card still has time left on it Blizzard counts them as an active subscriber. There are likely a great deal of "active" time cards out there with a few minutes left of play that haven't been used in a while. They also count people who have logged into the game from an "internet cafe"/game room for a few minutesin the past 30 days as active subscribers, these locations in Asia work like the time cards where people pay as they play. WoW has vastly fewer true subscribers than what they claim to have, numbers far lower than other subscription games have reached (Lineage I and II for example). WoW also double dips, which is how it has been holding on, same as EVE. They have a sub and a cash shop offering similar features as F2P cash shops. They wont stay afloat like that forever. Edited September 30, 2015 by Astasia | |} ---- Oh it was definitely too hard for a lot of people. And I'm talking about people who had years of experience in other MMOs. I know I dragged a bunch of people through attunement, and by the time we got to GA that was way too hard for them as well. There was a substantial number of people who showed up in this game with big expectations and hit a brick wall in their ability to do the content. | |} ---- The catch is it has a little less to do with the game, and a lot more to do with the people in charge of it. To put it simply. | |} ---- You can join one though so I don't really see much of an issue, IMO. This is easily one of the better F2P models I've seen. | |} ---- ---- ---- You find gambling with real life money for a 0.5% chance to get a specific skin you're after but most likely get random useless crap is an excellent model? Has there even been anything other than lockboxes added recently (I guess Togruta was one, but that's pretty slim)? To each his own, but the GW2 store is more like it, I find. | |} ---- It certainly appears like that at first, but you can find things like action bars and title unlocks on the AH for a trivial amount of in-game credits. The only large issue with the SWTOR system is the credit cap and the frustrating overflow/escrow system. You could otherwise unlock everything with normal credits, and have full access to all features of the game. WildStar's system certainly seems better though, with essentially everything open from the start. What worries me though, is I don't see what people are going to be spending money on. There are only a few cosmetic items, and quite honestly I don't find any of them to be very good. You can just buy the items you want off other players on the AH. I've never purchased a single "box" in SWTOR yet I have a great deal of the costumes they contain. Some people buy many of them and sell everything they don't want or have duplicates of. Edited September 30, 2015 by Astasia | |} ---- ---- ---- The catch is that you can't actually play. Either their servers drag down and die with lag due to inability to handle a significant number of players or they throttle the number of players such that you bail rather than wait for a 4+ hour queue. | |} ---- You make it sound like it's still flawed though? The complaints you listed have pretty much all been dealt with. Aside from the internet going all "Black Friday Sale @ Walmart" on their servers, the game seems tweaked. Needlessly complex things like runes have been simplified, extra content, raids are down to 20man, F2P opens the doors to fill out endgame positions. And I wouldn't say they targeted a niche market, they targeted the MMO market. Bosses, Story, Loot, Adventure, Go. | |} ---- sorry for not on topic but just to clarify something, you dont need a sub to be able to create guilds teams or that, BUT you do need to spend a tiny bit of cash in the cash shop or play long enough that you unlock the second cosmic reward, which really wont take that long or that much money. just look here ;-) Edited October 1, 2015 by Snarferatu | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- I am tired of people commenting on stuff they didn't even bother to check first. You can get everything unlocked without paying a single dime. Everything except rng boxes can be bought with in-game currency. At 1600 Cosmic points you unlock all social features, which is the consumption of 2 CREDD (subscription time(each gives 1000 points)) which can be bought from the CREDD Exchange for ~30platinum (prices always change) which isn't that hard to get when you get to lvl 50 and with some farming. Every single thing from the cash shop can be bought with OMNIbits another in-game currency which you get by doing whatever (killing mobs,doing pvp, completing quests and other stuff). That includes character slots, costume slots, slots for AH and everything that you mentioned.OT: The catch is that the game was made for more hardcore gamers. What I mean to say with that is that to be able to finish most end-game content you have to be in pretty good party, that knows how to dodge all the red and when to use certain skills. Basically you need to practice a lot dodging and timing you skills, that is why most consider the game hardcore as those people spend more time in the game and therefore practice those things more then casuals do. | |} ---- ---- It wasn't the difficulty, or the bugginess that drove me away from attunement, 1) It was the grind, to unlock a grind, to unlock final endgame grind. 2) It was the fact that attunement is character specific, rather than account wide; many players tend to get bored of just one character, but WS made it impossible to progress an Alt without going to 1). A very, very, very poor design decision. If you want to keep players engaged long-term without the need for constant new content allow them to pool achievements so that "progress" for one, is "progress" for all. Playing through on an Alt extends the life of the the game because that content is seen from a new angle. All The Best | |} ---- ---- No. WoW is at an all time low. They've not been this low in subscribers since their first expansion, and they are declining. They've lost millions of subscribers over the years. Yes, they may still be making a lot of money right now, but at the rate that they are declining, they are going to eventually start failing. They only had a short burst of subscribers for the new expansion, that lasted for about three-four months before it died back down to an all time low. | |} ----